


White Knights, Black Nights: or, What Happens in the Gulag Stays in the Gulag

by catwalksalone



Series: Beyond the Gulag [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, Casual Sex, Episode Tag, First Time, M/M, Porn with minimal Plot, Post Episode s01e04: White Knights, Sensory Deprivation, Team Dynamics, not quite hate sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 14:41:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6011917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catwalksalone/pseuds/catwalksalone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Ray was expecting from a rescue plan was Snart being thrown into the empty cell next to his. Anything that happened after that? Could probably not be called a plan at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Knights, Black Nights: or, What Happens in the Gulag Stays in the Gulag

**Author's Note:**

> Episode tag for 104. I stand ready to be jossed come Thursday. I guess I should enjoy it while I can.

The lights sizzled into unwilling life. Ray squinted up into the orange glare. Two guards manhandled someone through the door while a third unlocked the cell next to his. 

“Careful, princess,” came a recognisable drawl, “Any closer and you’ll have to propose marriage.”

Snart. Ray’s lungs caught and he was halfway to his feet when the jail door clanged shut with Snart on the wrong side of it. There was a grating twist of key in lock echoed by the same in his stomach, and then the guards were gone, the brief space of brightness dying with their departure. Ray had enough time to catch Snart’s familiar irritated expression before the filaments faded out into total darkness.

There was a silence so heavy that Ray wanted to take a hammer to it. “So this is the rescue plan, is it?”

He didn’t have to see the shrug to feel it.

“Patience, Raymond. Good things come to those who wait. Quietly.”

“Not feeling like sharing, huh?”

“You have heard of surveillance?”

Ray’s head ducked forward, amused. A pain shot through the back of his neck and he drew in a sharp breath. “This is 1986. We’re not living in the land of the NSA.”

“I’ve watched _The Americans_. Crappy bugs are still bugs. What was that before?”

“What what?”

“The little breathy thing.” Snart did an almost perfect imitation of Ray’s gasp. “You hurt?”

Ray thought about toughing it out. Snart already had him pegged as useless in a crisis; he didn’t want him to check the box marked crybaby next. Truth was, he wasn’t sure what had happened after the soldier had come at him with the butt of his rifle. He’d woken up already in this cell with one hell of a headache and a definite unwillingness to put his fingers to skin that throbbed hard enough to make him suspect it had grown its own little secondary circulation system under there. Especially given he couldn’t see what he was doing. 

“Raymond?”

“Huh? Oh. I got hit.”

“Where?”

“Back of my neck. Side. Backside. No. That’s not right. Let’s stick with neck. I don’t think it broke anything major. I’m still walking so that’s a plus.”

Snart made a sound that Ray might have translated as concerned coming from practically anyone else. “Do you want me to take a look?”

Ray snorted and regretted it immediately. Must remember neck injury, he told himself. “What, with all the light and the absence of bars between us?”

“I’ve worked in worse conditions.”

“Fine.” Resisting the temptation to argue, Ray stood up. He probably should find out what was going on back there. If there was a hematoma he needed to know about it before breathing got complicated.

He could touch the bars of his small cell just by reaching out. He wrapped his hand around the cold steel and pulled himself in towards them. From a few feet away, Ray heard the rustle of fabric as Snart moved too. He trailed his fingers across the bars, shuffling his feet until his fingertips brushed across knuckles, cold, too, but not as cold as metal.

“You found me,” Snart drawled. “I guess that means I’m ‘it’. Turn around.”

Ray did as he was told. One hand landed on his back, the other on his upper arm, both gliding to his shoulders. Snart pressed against him with one hand, the other continuing to move across his back to his spine as Ray obeyed the pressure and moved to his right. 

“Are you sure you want me to…?” Snart’s hands vanished.

Ray nodded and then remembered that meant exactly nothing. “If I say, ‘Be gentle,’ is that going to make you want to go the other way?”

“You’ll have to find out, won’t you?” Snart’s voice was almost in his ear, snide and mocking, the same as usual. This had to be the only situation where the sound of it was an actual comfort, Ray thought. “Which side?”

“Left.”

Gentle fingertips crawled up his back, resting for a second on the knob of his spine. From here they flattened and swept over his skin in short forays, light feather touches interspersed with more probing presses, slowly centering on one small area. Ray set his teeth, determined not to betray weakness. It hurt, but less than he was expecting.

More fingers then, barely perceptible as they dropped in quick rhythm up the length of the right side of his neck, cold drops like winter rain. Snart’s thumb rubbed across it, ruffling the short hairs at Ray’s hairline. The skin rippled down Ray’s shoulder and along his arm.

“Doesn’t seem like there’s a swelling. I’d say you got off light. Some rough skin, but you don’t have to worry about being hideously scarred, pretty boy.“

“Rough skin? Is it broken? Did it bleed?”

“I don’t know.” The fingers retreated and Ray straightened, ready to move. But before he could turn there was hot breath on his neck and then warm wetness in a stripe over the same area Snart had concentrated on before. 

“What the hell?!” Ray pulled forward and twisted around, glaring at the space where Snart’s face ought to be. 

“You asked the question. It’s darker than sin in here and I should know. How else was I supposed to tell? No blood, by the way, you’re welcome.”

“You were... you...you can’t just…” Lick me, Ray didn’t finish. The cold air on his damp skin bit as viciously as a bad divorce. He wanted to rub it dry, but was still too wary to touch the injury site.

“Oh, ease up, Boy Scouts of America. It’s not like I sucked your dick.”

For some reason Ray flashed on Snart kissing Vostok and his chest tightened as it had done out on the city street. He’d put it down to the cold then. It wasn’t much warmer now. His lungs prodded at him to breathe and so he did, heavier than he’d meant to, the exhale hanging too loud in the air between them. 

The silence stretched, Ray not daring to move. It was fanciful thinking that he could hear the slow blink of Snart’s eyelashes. Senses that heightened were not part of his particular skillset, not even with his vision wiped out. Ray immediately flashed to the many experiments he could set in motion to look at adaptation and longevity and he’d already dedicated half his mental processing power to the question of sense prioritization when Snart ripped it all away.

“So.” And if Ray had thought Snart drawled before, that was nothing on now. He managed to stretch the single syllable almost to breaking point, layering it with way more meaning than any two letters had a right to--a cupcake of a word. Ray detected the mild acidic taste of sarcasm soured further by the light mocking lilt, but something sweeter too, a dark sugary thread of intrigue. He almost gagged on it. 

“I don’t...All I want right now is to know how we’re getting out of here.”

“Oh yes?” Snart’s coat rustled and Ray knew without having to see that he was folding his arms, tilting his head and waiting, _waiting_ , for Ray to screw up again, somehow. Say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, _be_ the wrong thing. The worst part of it was that, too often, Snart was right.

“Yes!” he snapped back, gripping the bars with both hands. “They have Professor Stein and your partner and I don’t know what they’re doing with them but it can’t be anything good. I think they only left me alone because I was unconscious. It’ll be my turn now they know I’m awake.”

“Aw, is little Raymond scared?”

“No, he is not. And who are you calling little anyway? I spent six months held captive by Damien Dhark in a tank, like a _lab rat_. This doesn’t even rank top ten scary events in my life. I mean, did you ever meet Felicity Smoak’s mom? I did. I didn’t break for that or for Dhark and I won’t break now. ”

A sharp, slow clap rang out from closer than Ray had expected Snart to be. He twitched, rubbing one ear against his shoulder.

“I'm sure your Scouters are proud, little boy. Or in jail. Is there a badge for that?”

“No, there is…” Ray clutched at his hair. “God. You are so frustrating. Just tell me the plan.”

“Oops,” said Snart from even closer, his hands overlapping Ray’s on the bars. “Did I prick your balloon? Are you...going down?”

Ray fought to get out from under Snart’s hands, but he held him down with an iron grip. “Let go of me.” He moved forward, the cold metal bars bracketing his cheeks. 

“Make me.”

“Now who’s the little boy?”

“Not me.” 

"Oh, yeah, and you're gonna prove that how?"

"Too easy. Don't say you weren't warned."

Ray felt the heat of the words on his lips the merest fraction of a second before Snart’s mouth was on him. His first instinct was to push away, rip his hands free if he had to break them to do it, but then he flashed on the city street again, only this time he was Vostok and Snart, the man who loved the cold, was breathing heat into him like he’d swallowed Stein’s thermal core. He kissed back, drinking it in, the ice in his chest melting, sliding in warm rivers down his body, gathering heat and speed, tripping switches in his cells that lit him up like Christmas. Huh. A single battery that could power…

“Ow!” Ray recoiled, sucking his bitten lip into his mouth. No blood. “What was that for?”

“This is not the time for thinking.” Snart let go of one of Ray’s hands and found Ray’s coat with it, dragging him closer again. “Do.” He kissed Ray for the second time.

Most of Ray’s brain was explaining to him in detail and with diagrams why this was one of the worst ideas he’d ever had. What was left over jumped up and down on his rationality with nailed boots. It was possible, Ray thought, that his limbic system had been compromised by rifle butt. That would make this incident make a whole lot more sense.

He took his free hand and slid it through the bars, finding Snart’s coat. It was awkward as hell--and Ray took a moment to wish he hadn’t been so keen to develop an upper body to rival Oliver’s--yet somehow he managed to burrow through gaps between buttons to find Snart’s belt and pull him hard against the bars with it so that they collided at the groin. Ray moaned at the contact despite the layers between them. He would have taken a moment to be embarrassed--in his defense it had been a long time--but Snart said,

“I like how you think. Get your coat off.”

and all was forgotten in his hurry to obey. The rush of cold air on his back knocked the breath out of him and, like a moth, he returned to the only source of heat and light in the room. 

This time he moaned louder. Snart’s hand cupped his cock, already half-hard and furled awkwardly in his briefs. He snaked a hand down his pants to adjust himself.

“Playing with your boys, Raymond?”

“Is that a _Top Gun_ reference?”

He could feel the smirk Snart pressed against his throat. “Maybe,” Snart murmured into his skin.

To shut him up, or at least that’s what he told himself, Ray reached down and tracked the length of Snart’s erection with one finger. He was ramrod straight and hard against the length of his thigh. Ray sucked in a breath, feeling the answering swell of his cock. 

“Well, aren’t you just ready to go?”

Snart’s hand stilled and he jerked his head away, narrowly missing a collision with Ray’s chin. “Be grateful that it’s dark. I wouldn’t do this if I had to see your face.”

Ray grinned, annoyance forgotten. “I hate to break it to you--Leonard--you called me pretty boy. More than once. I think probability says yes. Yes, you would.”

“That’s not what I-” Snart started to snarl, but Ray ground into the base of him with the heel of his hand, sliding his fingers down to gently squeeze Snart’s balls. It was Snart’s turn to moan. Ray’s palms tingled in triumph. 

“Get back here and finish what you started,” said Ray. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re all about completing the mission.”

“Even if my methods are unorthodox?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in separate cells here. This couldn’t get orthodox even if we had a Greek dude in a black hat and big beard over in the corner.”

“ _What_?” Snart paused. “Shut up, Raymond.”

“Shutting up.” And it wasn’t like he had any choice, not really, because Snart’s nose nudged at his chin, demanding the tilt of his head. Ray complied, ignoring the ache at the base of his skull, and his rumbling groan vibrated through Snart’s lips on his neck. Ray imagined them transmitting atom by atom through Snart’s body until they returned to him through the hand still pressed against his pants. Conservation of something or other, he thought.

Ray pushed into Snart, too hard, hip bones colliding with metal with a dull stereo clang that buzzed in his eardrums like the aftermath of a gig spent standing too close to the speakers. He winced.

“Easy,” Snart muttered, his lips tracking up to the tip of Ray’s chin and placing a light bite there. “Like this.”

He took his hand from Ray’s cock and Ray heard the clink of a buckle and the shift of fabric against fabric. Then Snart’s hand skimmed his thigh, landing on his ass, easing it forward. Ray’s guts twisted with nausea as their cocks pressed together. As a kid, he’d always been the one to throw up whenever something super cool was about to happen. The first time he’d been taken to the Air and Space Museum and he’d had to go in wearing his mom’s sweater because he’d vomited all over his t-shirt about a second before they’d gotten through the door. This was not the Air and Space Museum, not even close: it was an oasis in an arid desert and Ray pushed the nausea down. Snart had lent his coat to Vostok, but Ray wasn’t taking any chances.

He found Snart’s skull, lips brushing cropped hair that slid into smooth skin as Snart lifted his head. They kissed as Snart began to make small rocking motions with his hips, brushing his cockhead over Ray’s with every movement, each thrust igniting a spark like flint wearing away at steel. Ray could feel the fire spreading across him, even into his hands that gripped cold bars. Much more of this and Ray imagined the heat pouring from his fingertips, turning the solid steel orange and white, bending the bars, curving the space until there was nothing between them but lingering distrust.

Ray moved his own hips now, the muscles of his ass clenching and unclenching, Snart’s hand rocking with him, fingers digging into his cheek. He broke the kiss. There had to be more. He needed more. Snart’s pants were harsh, wolf-like. Ray heard his own, high and shallow, like a yipping lap dog, and hated himself a little bit. 

“Belt. Zip. Whatever.” At least that sounded satisfactorily growly, he thought.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Ray worked at his own pants as he listened to Snart release himself. The air swelled with the scent of musk and sweat. Despite having no liquid for hours, Ray’s mouth watered. They fumbled back together and Ray’s guts roiled a second time as Snart’s bare flesh met his. He swallowed hard. 

“Can I?”

“Be my guest.” What would it take to shake that drawl? Could anything?

Ray wrapped one hand around both of them and the other gripped the top of Snart’s thigh. It was solid and cool against his hand, a sharp contrast to the heat that poured into his other palm, each thrust piling friction on friction. Maybe they could generate enough kinetic energy to light one of the overhead bulbs. Snart’s fingers wrapped around his own. They moved together, hands, hips, mouths that kissed sloppily and then not at all. Ray leaned his temple against a bar and locked his knees. He wasn’t going to wuss out now, even if his legs were starting to shake and his chest felt raw as if he had run five miles in sub-zero temperatures. This was one mission he was not going to screw up. 

Snart’s free hand clutched at Ray’s shoulder, fingers spasming in time with quiet grunts that stuttered out of him in a broken rhythm as if he was reluctant to let them go. 

“Raymond. Ray.”

It took Ray a second to recognize that it was Snart speaking. It took him a further second to recognize that it was because there were no layers here, no sides, only stripped down pleading. The rawness in his chest intensified. He tipped his head upright. All of a sudden he wanted to see. Wanted to see what expression Snart wore now. Did it take this to wipe the perma-smirk from his face? How long would it last, this state? How long before normal service was resumed?

“Ray. I can’t...I need you to…”

“Speed up?” Ray started to oblige.

“No. Slow down. Slow it right down.”

“Okay?”

Ray slowed his hand, slowed the roll of his hips, letting himself feel the bumps of their cockheads against the back of each finger in turn as he moved. Snart’s grunts got louder and his hand slipped from Ray’s shoulder to the front of his shirt, gripping it so hard it pinched Ray’s skin.

Snart’s hips began to stutter too and Ray could feel the pulse of it along his dick before Snart could even say anything. And then his hand was patterned with the warm wetness of Snart’s orgasm and the musky odor concentrated in the small space between them was intermingled with another smell that reminded him of hospitals and laundry day. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” said Snart and there was still no sign of the drawl.

“Does this mean I win this one?” Ray asked, laughter catching in his throat and edging his voice. 

“Define ‘win’,” said Snart. “Who’s the one who’s got to come so far?” And, yes, there was that drawl right back again. Ray should have had him on a count.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Never leave a man behind.” Snart pushed Ray’s hand out of the way and took a firm grip. “Are you strapped in? Because this could be a bumpy ride.” 

Ray’s laugh was stillborn on his lips as Snart began to move his hand. Now it was his turn to lean forward, to find Snart’s forehead and lean his own against it, wet fingers gripping Snart’s neck. His turn to make soft noises into the dark spaces and to let the fire ignite and build until he couldn’t hold it in any more. 

“I…” he said and came, the lights behind his eyelids the brightest thing in the room.

Snart cradled him through the aftershocks. Ray could feel the second it turned from a strange, but surprisingly fun, sexual encounter to an awkward half-naked standoff in a freezing cell. He let his hand drop and stood straight, telling his knees that they were just going to have to give way later. Now was not the time.

“Well, that was a thing that certainly happened.” Snart’s voice faded. He must have turned away.

Ray could hear rustling and then some sort of repetitive stroking noise. “What are you doing?”

“Clean up. Can’t have the rescue catch me all...out of sorts.”

“Clean up with what?”

“Shouldn’t a Boy Scout always be prepared?”

“Are you saying that you have a handkerchief?”

“A glove will do in a pinch.”

“Gloves come in pairs.”

“Your point?”

Ray smiled. “No good you keeping one of a pair, is it? I might as well have the other one for my own,” he looked down at himself even though he couldn’t see, “...clean up purposes.”

There was a silence, then a sigh, then the sounds of zip and buckle being fastened. More rustling and then Snart was back at the bars. “Here.”

Ray flailed his arms around until he collided with Snart’s hand. He plucked the glove from his loose grip. “Thank you, Leonard.”

“You’re welcome, Raymond.”

A few minutes later, Ray sat huddled on the cot, wrapped as deep in his too thin coat as it would allow. Snart had still said nothing about the plan. Snart. With whom he had just had sex. It wasn’t like he’d _forgotten_ given it was only minutes before; it was just. Wow. He had not seen that coming, metaphorically or literally. There was that weird chest thing again. Maybe he was coming down with something.

“Do you want to t-” he started.

“No.” Snart interrupted. A short, sharp two letter word, no layers.

“Good, good. So what happens in the gulag stays in the gulag?”

“Nothing happens in the gulag,” said Snart. “That’s the point of the gulag.”

“I don’t- Oh, okay.” Ray tried to keep the hurt out of his voice, but he could hear it in the air. He would have smacked himself in the head only, well, neck injury. It wasn’t that he wanted to go skipping through the daisies with Snart or even particularly repeat the experience, but he didn’t want to add this to the list of ways Snart dismissed him. Why it mattered what a criminal thought of him Ray had yet to figure out. He would have to add it to his ever-growing list of unsolved problems. Lower down than economical nuclear fusion but higher up than why he always seemed to be the one to change the toilet paper roll.

He sighed, one part annoyed, one part resigned.

“What was that?”

“What what?”

“The little breathy thing.” Snart did an almost perfect imitation of Ray’s sigh. Ray's head rang with the déjà vu. “Your neck okay?”

“It’s fine,” Ray snapped, thinking that even if it wasn’t Snart didn’t really give two hoots. One even. “I’m cold,” he added, less snappily. “You're probably enjoying that.”

“Not as much as you’d think.” Snart let out his own sigh then. This one was definitely all annoyed. Ray heard Snart’s bed creak, then his boots against the concrete floor and wondered what was coming. What was coming turned out to be a soft whoosh as he was hit on the shoulder by something light that fell to the mattress with a dull flump.

“Have my blanket,” said Snart. “And no, it's not part of the plan.” 

Ray tucked the blanket around his shoulders, folding his legs up to achieve maximum warmth. His chest eased. This cold air must have been really getting to him. “Good things come to those who wait?”

“Yes. Quietly,” Snart reminded him, his voice close enough that Ray knew he was leaning on the bars by the foot of Ray’s bed.

Ray smiled. “Roger that, Captain Cold,” he said, and settled down to wait. Maybe he’d make a start on that list.


End file.
